That Driving Force Called Love
by sunnywinterclouds
Summary: AU. Percy's a cab driver, and he can't decide if the non-tipping girl with the princess hair is his best passenger or his worst. Warning: puns.


My first passenger of the day – and of my entire taxi-driving career – was a tall girl with a backpack slung over her shoulders. She was actually pretty cute, with her windswept blonde curls and all, and if my roommate Jason had been there he _definitely_ would have been making jokes about how I ought to be picking her up in a bar instead of a taxi cab. But that's just because Jason's an idiot.

"Hey," I said as she climbed in, wondering absentmindedly if all cab-drivers sometimes thought their passengers were cute. I mean, it's not like her cuteness was _my_ fault. _She_ was the one with the unique gray eyes and totally princess-y hair. But did you grow immune to that sort of stuff over time? Like, it's unprofessional so you start seeing all your customers as faceless old men in suits? Would I pick up the same girl in two months and not find her cute at all because she was in the backseat?

"NYU," the girl said shortly, totally confusing me. What? NYU? What did _that_ mean? Why would she randomly say a fancy university name in a taxi cab? Was she guessing which college I went to? Or was she rubbing it in my face that I wasn't smart enough to go there? Was she –

"Today would be nice," she added on, after a couple seconds of me sitting there trying to figure out what the hell was going on. And then – oh, _duh_. She wanted to _go there._

I was such an idiot! She got in the cab, told me where she wanted to go, and I couldn't even tell what she _meant._ How was I going to survive in this job if I didn't even know cues to start driving? Why on _earth_ would she be saying 'NYU' for any reason other than wanting to go there? I sucked.

"No problem," I managed to choke out, smiling at her in the rear view mirror and hoping to _god_ she didn't notice how stupid I was. This was not the kind of first day I'd been hoping for.

My hands were clammy as I pulled away from the girl's apartment, which was lame because I hadn't been nervous about driving since I was sixteen and applying for my license. I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel as we immediately hit a red light – one of the perks of living in New York City – and tried to remember how I'd greeted her. What had I said? 'Hey'? Was that it? Was that an okay way to greet a passenger?

I shut my eyes – I'm a terrible driver, I know, shut up – and tried to remember what the guidebook had said on the topic. Friendly, polite, and not overly-prying, right? Did 'hey' fall within those lines? She didn't say 'hey' back, so maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all. Maybe I should have said 'where to?' Then at least her 'NYU' would have made sense. But then –

"The light's green," the girl said suddenly, successfully jolting me out of my silent reverie and making me slam on the gas with just a bit more force than strictly necessary. The car lurched forward, and I cursed every religious deity to ever be worshipped for making me so terrible at this. I'd been a great driver every single day up until this moment, honestly! I was just… nervous. _So_ nervous.

Unfortunately for me, and the girl in the backseat, I had a rather nasty tendency of talking when I was nervous. So even though the guidebook strictly stated that only passengers were supposed to be able to start a conversation, I found my mouth open and running before I could stop it.

"So, NYU, huh? You must be pretty smart, that's a good place, really great programs, I heard, I don't actually go there, I'm not that smart, I, uh, I'm all right, but I'm not a _genius,_ I mostly get C's, you look like you probably get all A's! But I, uh, go to school, it's the city college, it's pretty okay but nothing special and there's no on-campus living and oh yeah why don't you live on the NYU campus because, I mean, I'm _assuming_ you don't live there because you're getting a taxi there and if you–"

"Please," the girl said weakly, "please, _please_ stop talking."

"Right," I responded, resisting the urge to let my head fall down against the steering wheel and honk the horn in some sort of expression of my misery. I hated myself, I really did. It sure was a good thing I wasn't allowed to find this girl cute, because I'd totally made myself look like an idiot in front of her. Which was appropriate, because I _was_ an idiot. Percy Jackson, first-class dumbass. Hey, that rhymed, go figure.

The rest of the drive went off without a hitch, though. I didn't crash into anything or say anymore stupid stuff or fall asleep at the wheel (with my schedule, it'd be pretty justified). I pulled up in front of New York University cleanly, totally rocking the parallel parking, and turned around in my seat to grin at the girl. She didn't look impressed, but hey, I'd call it a half-win because there was a little old lady crossing the street during a green light back on Main and I totally didn't run her over.

The girl handed me eleven dollars and fifty four cents, which just so happened to be exactly what she owed me. No tip. Not even a little one. Not even an extra penny. My spirits sank just as quickly as they had risen as I looked down at what was definitely a failure on my part.

By the time I looked up again, the girl had already left the car. I hadn't heard the door slamming over the sound of my own despair, I supposed. I sighed, took a couple more moments to hate my life, and pulled back out into the New York traffic.

_Definitely_ not the kind of first day I'd been hoping for.

… … …

I think it goes without saying that I never exactly wanted to be a cab driver.

I mean, it's not like I specifically _didn't_ want to be a cab driver. It's not like I spent my elementary school days being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and always answering _anything but a cab driver._ It's not like I ever suffered from nightmares about hauling people around the mean streets of New York City in bright yellow cars and woke up in a cold sweat screaming _no, not a red light, anything but that!_ It's not like I'd ever been_ against _being a cab driver.

But I'd also never really been for it.

I'd been working odd jobs for ages, to pay for unnecessary luxuries such as rent and food and the works, but I'd honestly just never thought I'd make my way to cab driver. A coffee barista, sure. A grocer at Walmart, no problem. But a cab driver? _Really? _It'd just never occurred to me, and it probably never would have if my best friend Grover hadn't suggested it shortly after I'd lost my gig at the movie theater. I'd laughed him off at first, of course, but the more I thought about it, the more it kind of just seemed like a pretty good idea.

I did some research, for once, and the job sort of… clicked with me. Not only did it pay _way_ better than some other no-college-degree-jobs I could mention, but I was totally qualified for it. United States citizenship, check. Driver's license with no big offenses, check. Never killed anyone, check so far. At least twenty one years of age, check just barely. Personal hygiene… check-ish. Fluent in English, check, and don't listen to whatever my stepdad might say, because he's a teacher and therefore his opinion doesn't count.

Everything sort of just happened after that. I took a 24-hour course that felt a bit more like 24 years and put down my starting fee (pretty much forgoing food for that week) and _voila,_ I was a cab-driver. As you might've guessed, though, I was a little less qualified to be a taxi-driver in real life than I was on paper. There were just a lot of _rules,_ all right? I didn't really mesh well with _rules._ But I meshed even _worse_ with giving up, and I had too many college classes to pay for to ditch my new job after one bad experience with a princess-haired girl. It was only my first day! Hell, it was only my first _passenger._ Of _course_ I was going to be bad at it the first time. It would get better soon.

The thing was, though – and it scares me just to say it – I was _right._ Things _did_ get better. I learned which old ladies thought I was charming and let me talk as much as I wanted, and I learned which guys had the same taste in music as me and let me turn up the radio as high as it went. I learned which rich people were really good tippers, and I learned which college students made good conversation and were interested in marine biology. I learned which people to avoid, like the stingy ones and the rude ones (my first customer, the blonde girl, was both) and I learned how to tell if a person was probably going to be nice or not just by looking at their expression when they hailed a cab. Impatient and fidgety usually equaled someone in a hurry, which usually equaled jerk – anyone else was probably fine.

And after all that, I learned the schedules of my very favorite people, like Mrs. O'Brien, who said I reminded her of her son and sometimes had snacks to give me, and Mr. Brunner, who was a Greek Mythology teacher at a middle school and always had an interesting story to tell, and a girl named Rachel, who was not only funny but tended to toss hundreds at me thinking they were tens (and when I set her straight she waved me off). Those were the ones I picked up every morning, no matter what, and those where the ones who asked for my number so that they could call me to drive them to wherever.

Now, I wasn't one to brag (much), but you've got to hand it to me, I totally rocked the taxi-driver career. I had everything down by the first two weeks. In fact, by the end of my third week, I was so confident in my cabbing abilities that when I saw the blonde girl I picked up my first day trying to hail a taxi on the side of the street, I couldn't help but pull over.

Don't ask me _why_ I did it, okay? If I'd had my mad jerk-determining skills on my first day, I'd have never picked her up. She gave off kind of a _grr_-vibe. But I'd made myself look kind of stupid in front of her, and I refused to let a random stranger who I could totally choose to never see again think poorly of me.

So I pulled over.

"Hey there," I greeted her, adjusting the rear view mirror so that I could see her face in it. "Where to?"

"NYU," she said, which I probably should have guessed. Oh, well.

"You got it. Destination, education." _Man,_ I was witty. The girl didn't seem to think so, though, because she looked up to glare at the back of my head.

"Oh. You."

"Great to see you too," I replied, aiming her a smile laced so heavily with boyish charm that it would've given several old ladies heart attacks. She grunted her acknowledgement of my existence and dug a giant book out of her backpack. I couldn't see what the title was from my limited view in the mirror, but the book itself looked boring and – ugh – _educational._

"So," I started, as I turned on the blinkers and waited for an opening in traffic, "sorry about last time. I was really nervous and stuff."

"Sure," she said dryly, not even looking up from her book, which she'd opened up to a random page. I bet she wasn't even reading it. I bet it was _upside down._ That's what people did when they didn't want to talk to you, right? Pretended to read books but accidentally held them upside down?

"Well," I continued anyway, "it was my first day. So. Um. Yeah."_ Smooth, Percy._

"You don't seem to have improved much," she snapped, effectively shutting me up. Jeez, I was just trying to make _conversation._ It wasn't a _crime._ I honestly should have talked the entire car-ride just to piss her off, but I wasn't in the mood to be stiffed for a tip again, so I zipped my lips.

When we got there, though, the girl handed me… eleven dollars and fifty four cents. _What._

"Um," I said, even though I wasn't actually supposed to verbally breach the subject of tipping, "that's it?"

"Isn't that what I owe you?" the girl said, already stuffing her book back in her bag and climbing out of the car.

"Yeah, but… I mean…" I trailed off, and she stared at me expectantly with those scary-gray eyes of hers. It was like she was staring right _through_ me, into my soul or something. Creepy.

"You want a tip?" she questioned, and I nodded mutely. "Then don't talk next time."

"It's not against the _law_ for me to talk, you know!" I called out after her, even though it couldn't have been clearer that she didn't care. "And there won't _be_ a next time!"

… … …

There was a next time.

It wasn't my fault, though, honestly. It was my mom's. She raised me _not_ to be a jerk, you see, so when I saw the princess-haired girl on the corner of the street, her backpack held over her head to protect her from the pouring rain, it was pretty much the definition of a moral dilemma for me. On the one hand, haha, she was getting soaked! On the other hand, oh no, she was getting soaked. My mind was made up for me, though, when a car sped right by her and splashed puddle water all over her new-looking jeans, which was such a depressingly cliché scene that I had no choice but to pull over for her. The woes of being a decent guy.

"Oh my gosh, thank you so much, I–" she cut herself off as she noticed it was me in the driver's seat, which I thought was a little harsh. She'd only met me, like_, twice,_ and I hadn't been _that_ bad. There was no reason for her to dislike me, really, especially when I'd picked her up in the rain.

"You're welcome," I muttered under my breath, but too quiet for her to hear. Louder, I said, "NYU?"

"Uh, yeah," she said, shaking her head a bit, effectively getting rain water all over the cab. "And, uh, make it fast. I'm late."

"No problem," I said, watching mournfully as she wrung her hair out on my clean backseats. I should've rolled down the window and stuck my tongue out her as I drove by, _that's_ what I should've done. _That_ would have been satisfying.

I didn't say a single word for the rest of the ride, nor did I break any traffic laws whatsoever. I was the perfect cab driver. Add that to the fact that I'd picked her up in the rain and gotten her to the college in the fastest legal time possible, and I'd say I deserved a pretty decent tip.

But she handed me eleven dollars and fifty four cents.

"You're kidding me," I said, looking down at my pitiful earnings with frustration. "What did I do _this_ time?"

"You sped right through a yellow light a few streets back," she informed me, slinging her backpack over her shoulders. I stared open-mouthed at her.

"But… but there's nothing wrong with that! That's not against the _law!_ And you said to make it fast!"

"I dunno, man," she said, and did I detect a _teasing lilt_ in her voice? "It made me feel pretty unsafe. Guess you'll just have to try harder next time."

I watched her leave, still gaping. She… that… that little… what a… argh! Talk about _frustrating!_ I bet she wouldn't tip me even if I performed my taxi-driving duties absolutely flawlessly. I fumed silently as I started up the car, hating the princess-haired girl and also the rain and also New York City traffic because _man_ it was awful. Back on the subject at hand, though, the blonde girl was totally a she-devil sent from the underworld to test my resolve as a cabby or a human being or something like that. It seemed like the most plausible explanation, after all.

By my fifth red light in a row, though, I'd calmed down enough to realize I was being stupid. Tipping was a _choice_, not an obligation, and I had no right to expect any extra money if I hadn't done my job well enough to earn it. As an adult, I had to accept that my actions had consequences and that all the decisions I made would affect me in some way. Yes. That sounded professional and mature and all that other reasonable stuff.

Still, though, I couldn't help but wonder what it would take for the girl to tip me. Surely I could make a perfect run from her apartment to NYU, right? I'd lived in New York City since the day I was born, and I knew the place like the back of my hand. After cab-driving for almost a month, I'd pretty much timed the lights, too (even though I was currently hitting my eighth red one), and as long as no old people or teenagers caused any trouble, I'd be able to make the trip without any reasons for her _not_ to tip me.

So it was settled. Before I ended my taxi-driving career (which might last anywhere from another year to the rest of my life, with the way my classes were going), I'd get the blonde girl to tip me. I'd put it on my bucket list, right between scuba diving and actually graduating college. It was probably more important than the two of those put together.

And I could totally do it.

… … …

I didn't start religiously picking the girl up every day, though. I'd drive by her place every morning around eight o'clock, and if she was there, I'd pull over, and if she wasn't, I'd just keep going. It wasn't really a big deal, and neither of us commented on it. She raised her eyebrows at me a bit for the first few days, but after that, she made no indication that she even knew who I was. She just got in the cab, said "NYU," and stuck her nose in a book for the rest of the ride.

For the first week and a half, I was on my best cab-driver behavior. I smiled politely at all times, followed all the traffic laws and safety regulations to the letter, and didn't speak at all. But the girl kept on not tipping me. The first time, she said it was because I ran over a pothole and it messed up her hair, and the second time she said it was because it was too dark and gloomy for her to read her book, and the third time she said it was because my shirt was such a bright green that it hurt her eyes. I would just grin and bear it, then crumple the eleven dollars and fifty four cents in my fist so hard that any vending machine would totally reject the wrinkled bills.

After that, though… after that, I realized the girl was never going to tip me. Like, _ever_. She was _screwing_ with me, it wasn't going to happen and we both knew it. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum and swearing up and down that I'd never drive her anywhere again, I just tossed my professional demeanor out the door.

"Yo," I said to her as she climbed in on a Thursday, because if she wasn't going to tip me, I could say stuff like 'yo' without fear of consequences_._ "What's your name, anyway?"

"Um," the girl said, "Annabeth."

_Annabeth._ What a stuck-up, prissy name. "It suits you."

"Thanks, I guess."

"You wanna hear a joke?" I asked her, because I'd recently discovered an amazing plethora of car puns and when I'd presented them to Jason, he'd tried to punch me in the face. I figured I ought to tell one or two of them to the girl – Annabeth – not only because they were car jokes and we were totally in a car, but because she wasn't at an angle where she could do me any physical harm. Unless she reached over and strangled me with my seat belt…

"Um. No. Not really."

"I once tried to learn how to drive a stick shift," I began anyway, figuring she wouldn't kill me because then we'd crash and she'd be late to class, "but I couldn't find the manual."

She didn't laugh. Huh. She probably didn't understand the joke. "You see, a manual –"

"I got it," Annabeth said, looking more irritable than amused. Go figure.

"It's funny because –"

"No, it isn't," she cut me off again. How _rude._

"Well, you're reading," I turned around in my seat so that I could get a good look at her book title, "_The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements._ You clearly have no taste."

"It's interesting," Annabeth said, totally proving my point about her liking dumb things. "And keep your eyes on the road."

For the rest of the drive, I _did_ keep my eyes on the road. But I also talked. And talked. And talked. I didn't really _say_ anything, I just talked. I talked about my college classes and current gas prices and movies that made me cry (um, hello,_ How To Train Your Dragon 2_) and the goddamn _weather._ Annabeth stubbornly kept her nose in her book and didn't look up at me, but I could totally tell I was getting to her. There was a furrow in her brow and she was clenching her teeth really hard and she didn't turn single page the whole way to NYU.

By the time we reached campus, she was looking like she might reach up and rip all her blonde curls right out of her head (which would've been even funnier than my joke, by the way). She gave me a glare and eleven dollars and fifty four cents. I gave her my most endearing smile and a business card.

Okay, it wasn't _really_ a business card. I couldn't afford business cards. So I'd just written my name and contact information on a bunch of index cards to hand out to customers.

"_Percy Jackson_," Annabeth read aloud. "_A college student with great hair/and cab driver extraordinaire_."

"Good, right?" My poetic skills were _legendary._

"Do you actually hand these out to people?" she asked weakly, apparently not as impressed with my slogan as she really ought to have been. Hmph.

"Only to my favorite customers," I told her, cranking the charm up to full-blast. "This way you can call me whenever you need a lift."

"Because _that's _going to happen," she muttered under her breath, as she glanced down at my business/index card again. "Your name is Percy?"

"Cab driver extraordinaire. At your service." "Your license says it's Perseus." Why, _why_ was it required by the state of New York that I had to put my license up on the dashboard of my taxi cab? And why, _why_ wouldn't the DMV accept Percy as my legal first name? Why?

"Yes. Well. That's a typo."

"There's a typo on your license," Annabeth deadpanned. I widened my eyes innocently at her.

"Yeah. My theory is that the guy printing them was writing a _Clash of the Titans_ fanfiction or something and then he got so used to typing 'Perseus' that he accidentally put that instead of my real name. Tragic, huh?"

"Right." Annabeth rolled her eyes very pointedly at me before opening her door.

"Call me!" I told her as she left.

"Don't count on it!" she called back.

"The car stopped with a jerk," I yelled out to her, "but then she got out!"

As I pulled back out into traffic, I was totally sure that I spotted Annabeth cracking up. Score.

… … …

I kept picking Annabeth up in the morning, and she kept pretending like I wasn't the most hilarious person she'd ever met in her entire life. She also kept pushing her poor backpack to its limit by stuffing it with the biggest, most boring books she could find. Seriously. They looked _dangerously _boring.

"_One Hundred Years of Solitude,_" I read aloud, after what felt like hours trying to unscramble the title in my rear view mirror. "Nice. Is it about your childhood?"

"Haha," Annabeth responded. "It's this 20th century classic about the rise and fall of a fictional town called Macondo, which is home primarily to Latin Americans who deal with a variety of themes ranging from governmental corruption to the endlessness of death to–"

"Dear God," I said. "If you ask me, that book should have stayed alone for a hundred _more_ years."

"Shut up, Percy. It's a great book. It won a Nobel Prize."

"A Nobel Prize? Isn't that the award that Leonardo DiCaprio can't win?"

Annabeth groaned and averted her eyes from her book so that she could look up at the ceiling of the cab, like she was asking the skies _why me?_ "That's an Oscar, Percy, an _Oscar._ It's for acting. The Nobel Prize is for creations and discoveries that change the way we live."

"Hey, _Titanic _totally changed the way I live. I'm never going on a boat ever."

Annabeth made a squeaky little noise of despair that almost made me feel sorry for her. Almost. "I mean people who make _real_ differences, Percy, like Robert Lucas or Marie Curie or –"

"What about the guy who invented knock-knock jokes?" I cut her off.

"Huh?"

"Did _he_ get a Nobel Prize?"

"Um," Annabeth said. "I should think not."

"That sucks. He totally deserved one. He used knocking in his jokes and not doorbells."

"…so?"

"So if _that _doesn't get you a _no-bell_ prize, what will?" It took a moment for the joke to sink it, which I thought proved that Annabeth wasn't as smart as she seemed to think she was. When she _did_ get it, though, she closed her book so that she could bury her face in her hands and groan.

"Jesus _Christ,_ Percy, you need to stop."

"What, you don't like jokes?"

"No, I don't like _your_ jokes. If you can call them that."

I ignored that last part, because my jokes were amazing, and asked her, "What kind of jokes _do _you like?"

"I don't know. Funny ones?"

"So… my ones?"

"_No,_" she said firmly, and then scrunched her eyebrows up and took a couple of seconds to think about my earlier question. I took a couple of seconds to convince myself that she didn't look adorable like that. "Science jokes, I suppose."

"Well, I _would _tell you a science joke," I started, totally thrilled to have a pun already at hand, "but all the good ones _Argon._"

To my complete and utter surprise, Annabeth belted out a laugh before putting her hands over her mouth to stifle it. I grinned widely at her in the rear view mirror and watched as she tried to hide her blush. "I should've known you liked chemistry jokes," I said, finding myself sort of disappointed that we were nearing the NYU campus. "Weren't you reading a book about the periodic table a little while back?"

"Yeah," Annabeth said, still smiling microscopically. "It was about how the elements play roles in our lives and how they affected the scientists who discovered them."

"Oh," I said, pretending like that didn't sound like the most boring book in the history of the world. "Like how radiation killed Marie Curie or whatever?"

"Well, she actually –" Annabeth cut herself off. "Yeah, pretty much." I took that to mean that she'd been about to lecture me in science or history or whatever but had decided to spare me, and I grinned at her harder. She looked at the ceiling of the cab and didn't say anything else for the short rest of the drive.

"What, no tip?" I asked her after I'd pulled over and she'd handed me my eleven dollars and fifty four cents, which for the record was hardly enough to cover the gas money from her place to NYU. "Aren't you going to factor in the jokes?"

Annabeth raised her eyebrows at me. "You're right," she said, and made to grab a dollar back from me. Years of being robbed for my lunch money in middle school had given me great reflexes, though, and I yanked my hand away from her and stuffed the cash in the glove box before she could get to it.

"Harsh, Annabeth," I told her. It was the first time I'd ever actually said her name aloud, and I decided it didn't sound quite as prissy as I'd first deemed it. "See you tomorrow."

"Okay," she said, and it sounded almost like she _didn't _hope I'd drive off the Brooklyn Bridge before the day was over. I took it as progress. And then didn't spend an hour that night looking up and memorizing tons of science jokes. That would be ridiculous. And obsessive. And _weird. _And I was most definitely none of those things.

Shut up.

… … …

"Hi," I greeted Annabeth the next day. "Let me guess: NYU?"

"You're a genius, Percy, really," she muttered, unzipping her backpack and pulling out another one of those giant books of hers.

"What's that one about?"

"Female serial killers," Annabeth replied, which was just a little terrifying, but it reminded me of a serious issue I had to bring up.

"Oh, hey, what do chemists do to the bodies of the people they bore to death?"

Annabeth glared at me. "Percy, there's never been –"

"They _barium._" I grinned at her. "Get it? Like the element?"

Annabeth sank down low in her seat, put her book over her face, and didn't say anything.

"C'mon, Annabeth, I just told you a chemistry joke. Give me a _reaction._"

Annabeth groaned out a muffled, "Stop."

"Yeah, you're right, I shouldn't use all my jokes right now. I should spread them out _periodically._"

"Pull over and let me out," Annabeth said, but she didn't sound like she meant it, so I kept driving. When she finally put the book back in her lap, about five minutes later, she had faint traces of a smile on her face. Percy: 1. Annabeth: 0.

"So, geek, what class have I been driving you to, anyway?"

"I'm not a geek," she said, then blushed. "And… Chemistry."

I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it. I'd been _so_ on point with the chemistry jokes! Go, Percy! "Promise me that if you have to do a presentation in there, you'll open with one of my puns. Please."

"Fat chance," Annabeth said, but she was smiling openly now, which was a great look for her. I bit my lip as I restrained myself from making some lame _we have chemistry_ jokes. I was above those. Sort of.

"So," I said, looking for some sort of topic that would distract me from her cuteness. Wasn't she supposed to be a faceless old man in a suit by now? "What're you majoring in? Something science-y?"

"Um, no, actually. Architecture." I noticed she clenched her jaw a bit, like she was bracing herself for teasing or something. Geez, I wasn't _that_ mean.

"That's cool. Too much math for me, though." Algebra and statistics had been _more_ than enough, thank you very much.

"What about you? I mean, what's your major?"

"What, haven't you guessed? I'm gonna be a stand-up comedian." I grinned at her in the review mirror as she snorted.

"Yeah, sure, like there's a college degree for _that._ Plus, you'd get booed of the stage."

"Probably. I'd have to keep the rotten tomatoes they threw at me just to feed myself." For someone who claimed I wasn't funny at all, Annabeth was smiling pretty hard.

"Seriously, though. You're not planning to be a bad taxi driver forever, right?"

"Shut up, Annabeth. I rock this job. But, yeah, I guess my life goals are a bit higher than chaperoning you to and from school every day." I decided that the slightly sad look that I thought I saw flash across her face for a second was just my imagination. "Um, I'm going into marine biology."

"_Really?_" she asked, in a tone of voice that was more shocked than I'd have liked it to be. I tried not to take it as an insult. "But isn't that… you know, _science?_"

"Yeah, but it's pretty painless. And mathless, which is always a plus. "

"Sure, Percy," Annabeth said, giving me a look that could almost be described as _fond_. "Why marine biology, though? Got a thing for coral or whatever?"

"Well, actually, coral is a substance made up of the skeletons of dead underwater microorganisms, and biology is the study of living things," I told her, beyond thrilled to be able to lecture _her_ on something educational, for once. It was a pleasant turnabout. "So coral's not technically a part of marine biology."

"Know-it-all," Annabeth grumbled, then looked horrified with herself. "I can't believe I just said that."

I laughed. "Me, neither. Be prepared to have it held over your head forever. Anyway, though, I'm not particularly crazy about ocean life or anything, I'm just crazy about the ocean. I'd've majored in surfing if I could have, but _apparently_ that's not a thing." I scoffed at the memory of my high school guidance counselor breaking that piece of information me. That'd been a bad day.

"You surf?" Annabeth asked, then blushed. I smirked at her in the rear view mirror.

"You bet. You imagining me in a bathing suit now?"

"No," Annabeth said firmly, still blushing. "I was just thinking it explains why you're such an idiot. Your brain must be waterlogged or something."

"Hey!" I took offense to that.

"No, no, you're right, water's not _nearly_ enough to cause the damage you've so clearly suffered. I guess maybe your brain leaked out and got replaced by seaweed, _that_ seems plausible."

"Shut up, Annabeth."

"Seaweed's a part of marine biology, am I right? Are you going to study yourself in class?"

"You're mean."

"The other students ought to dissect your head for research. Hands-on experience and all." Annabeth was full-out grinning as she teased me, the jerk. I purposely slowed down at the next yellow light so that we caught the red and she was a bit late to class. She got the eleven dollars and fifty four cents out of her wallet and into my hands in record time before dashing towards the closest NYU building.

"See you tomorrow, Seaweed Brain!" Annabeth called out as she ran off, her blond curls bouncing behind her. I wasn't sure why, but I smiled as she went.

… … …

Annabeth soon took up a permanent position as both my favorite and my least favorite passenger. On the one hand, she was a nerdy little jerk who made fun of me all the time and never ever tipped. On the other hand, she was hilarious and interesting and fun to talk to (but not cute at all). I sort of hated her and was tempted to crash the car into a building every time she called me a seaweed brain, but I also sort of adored her and wanted to give her a hug every time she said a big word or scrunched up her eyebrows. It was _beyond_ frustrating.

It didn't help that I had _no idea_ how Annabeth felt about me. She probably liked me, because she stopped bringing books in the cab so that she could instead spend the whole ride talking to me, but she also probably didn't like me, because pretty much everything she said to me was an insult. Was she resigned to having me drive her around? Or did she look forward to it? Or did she just not care? Did she think about me in her spare time? Or in class? Or did she only remember my existence when I was driving her around? Did she _like_ me driving her around? Would she care if I stopped picking her up in the morning? Would she _notice_?

Girls, I decided, were way too hard. Especially ones that made you feel like you were fourteen and short and awkward again. Stupid Annabeth.

Things got a little clearer, at least, on a Wednesday, when I was doing my usual eight o'clock drive-by around Annabeth's apartment. I saw her standing at her usual spot and was about to stop to pick her up when some _other_ taxi cab pulled up in front of her.

Damn.

I told myself I didn't care, and that I could find some other passenger who would actually tip me and not tell me that _Finding Nemo_ was a kids' movie and that I was too old to watch it every Saturday, but then Annabeth said something to the stranger-cab that made it drive away without her. I stared for a second, then realized I was in traffic and pulled over. What had just happened?

Annabeth, I then realized, had told the other cab that she didn't want it or something. She wasn't out there waiting for a _taxi_, she was waiting for _me._ Me, specifically. Percy Jackson, college student with great hair and cab driver extraordinaire.

I grinned even wider than normal as Annabeth clambered into the cab. She glanced up at my smile, blushed, and made a show of focusing her eyes somewhere else.

"Hey," she said, as I pulled back out into the street, "what happened to your watch?"

I looked down at my wrist, where my underwater watch usually was. I'd honestly misplaced it the night before, but I said, "I ate it."

"_What?_"

"Uh-huh. Have you ever tried eating a watch, Annabeth? It's very…" I opened the glove box and rummaged around until I found a pair of sunglasses, then put them on for dramatic effect, "_time-consuming._"

Annabeth let out a mixture of a laugh and a groan, which she did a lot. "That was actually the worst joke I'd ever heard."

"You haven't heard enough jokes, then," I told her. "Don't worry, though, I can work on that."

"Please don't," Annabeth said, but she was still smiling. "So… what _did_ happen to your watch? Assuming you didn't really eat it."

"Nah, I lost it," I said simply. I was a sucker for puns, though, so I added on, "I was going to look for it, but I couldn't _find the time._"

Annabeth muttered something under her breath about how they wouldn't be able to find my _body_ once she was done with me, then said a bit louder, "How's the macroeconomics course going, anyway?"

"Bad." Macroeconomics was a required course, but it was also evil. Pure evil. "I've got finish my essay on the Keynesian model by Friday, but at least I'm almost done with it."

"Right," Annabeth said. She looked sort of nervous, so I filled up the rest of the drive with mindless chatter about sea sponges (namely the one discovered in 2011 that got named _Spongiforma squarepantsii_, which I personally thought was hilarious), whether book Toothless or movie Toothless was better, and what hat to wear depending on the season. Annabeth kept her mouth clamped shut until we pulled up on campus.

"You know," she said, averting her eyes from mine as she handed me my eleven dollars and fifty four cents, "my last class gets out at 3:20."

"Cool," I told her, not really getting why I needed to know this. Annabeth bit her lip and focused her gaze on a spot slightly above my head.

"Well… I was thinking… maybe… you could pick me up. Then. If you're not busy. With other customers. Or passengers. I'm not sure what they're called, actually, but… um. You could just. Come by. And drive me home. Maybe. If you wanted."

I stared at her for a second, concentrating hard on not full-out _beaming_ at her. It was difficult, because much as I hated to admit it, nervous Annabeth was adorable. "Are you gonna tip me if I do?"

"Well… no."

"Then I'll see you at 3:20." I didn't really care whether I ever got a tip from her or not, because I'd gotten something way better: one thousand million percent positive confirmation that Annabeth liked me.

I drove off and didn't spend the next seven hours counting down until 3:20.

… … …

"Hey," I greeted Annabeth in early December. I'd been a cab driver for almost four months by that point, and I'd known her just as long. "When do you get winter break?"

"Next week," Annabeth told me. "I'm off for nearly a month."

"Damn," I said. "Then I guess it's a good thing I've got your Christmas present _now._" I reached into the passenger's seat and tossed a package at her.

"You got me a present?" Annabeth said uncertainly, picking up the gift. It had snowman wrapping paper on it, as well as a little red bow that I'd had to tape on because I'd used up the stickiness by putting it on various surfaces of my apartment. "You didn't have to."

"Of course I did. Open it up!" Annabeth did, very slowly – it figures she was one of those people who had to make sure the wrapping paper didn't rip at all – and held up the shirt I'd gotten her. It had a picture of the periodic table on it.

"_I wear this shirt periodically_," she read aloud off of it, and groaned. I couldn't help but laugh.

"I got me one, too," I said, ignoring road laws so that I could turn around in my seat and show her I was wearing an identical (but bigger) shirt. "See, now we match! And it's got a bad joke _plus_ science on it, so I figure it suits us both."

"Guess it does," Annabeth said, smiling. "Thanks, Percy."

"No problem," I answered, watching as she folded up the shirt and placed it neatly in her backpack, then did the same with the wrapping paper.

"I didn't get you anything," she said quietly, putting her hands in her lap and wringing them together. "I didn't really think to."

"That's cool," I told her. "You could always just tip me."

"Sure," she snorted. "I've got a few days before winter break, I'll find you something." I thought it was a little silly that she'd rather spend money on a present for me than fork over an extra dollar or two at the end of the ride, but I decided against saying anything.

I let Annabeth out at NYU and spent the next seven hours actually being a _good_ cab driver. I helped a lady fit all her bags into the trunk of the taxi before driving her to the airport and got a really great tip out of that, so I could've totally taken the rest of the day off if I hadn't been so set on picking Annabeth up at 3:20. I had _serious_ crush issues.

When my favorite/least favorite customer got into the cab, though, she said, "We're mixing it up today, Seaweed Brain. To the mall!" I noticed she'd changed into her periodic table shirt.

I raised my eyebrows at her, both because of her routine-change and her clear enthusiasm. "May I ask why?"

"We're going shopping," she informed me, her gray eyes sparkling. "So I can buy you a present."

"Oh," I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed. "You don't have to –"

"Shut up and drive, dummy," she said, still grinning at me. She seemed so excited about buying me a present – or maybe about spending the afternoon with me – that I complied.

Annabeth's smile didn't fade for the whole rest of the drive. It was still there, in fact, as we walked through the mall's automatic doors and got a strong whiff of the perfume department from somewhere off to the left.

"What should we do first?" I asked her, because we obviously weren't going to go straight down to shopping business when we could waste a couple extra hours goofing off and winging it. "Puppies or playground?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes at me. "Puppies, _obviously,_" she said, and started off towards the pet shop, with me at her heels. As I caught up to her, I realized that we'd never ever stood next to each other, and I was almost half a foot taller than her. ...Okay, it was more like four inches, but whatever, it was cool.

We spent half an hour playing with the puppies, who were honestly, like, cavity-inducing cute. Annabeth fell kind of in love with a black lab she called Nikola Tesla (because he was some fancy scientist dude or something). I favored a golden retriever that I dubbed Tiberius (because it was badass). We had to get out of there pretty fast, though, before I adopted a dog despite being broke and living in a no-pets-except-fish apartment, so we said our farewells and left the area.

After that, we made our way to the center of the mall, where the security guards wouldn't let us on the playground. Assholes. Annabeth gave me a couple of amused looks as I grumbled all the way over to the JC Penny shop, where the extensive collection of hats promptly made me forget all my troubles.

I, of course, went straight for the fedoras, as they made me feel like that suave guy from _White Collar._ Annabeth decided to ease her way into the ridiculousness by trying on a couple of beanies at first, but I managed to get her into a ski cap with no real difficulty. I was even able to tie a bandana around her head and snap a picture.

"Bandanabeth," I said simply, grinning at my own brilliance. She ripped the cloth off her head and tried to strangle me with it until we got kicked out of the store.

Next, we stopped by Sears, which was mostly full of appliances like ovens and clothes dryers. It was sort of fun to mess with the dials on all the stuff there, but then I pressed so many buttons on a dishwasher that it wouldn't turn on anymore. We hightailed it out of there pretty fast after that.

The place where we really struck gold, though, was some awesome jewelry shop in the left wing of the mall. Annabeth browsed through the animal earrings (she liked owls, for some reason) while I checked out the totally cool gold necklaces they had.

"You could get me this, Annabeth," I suggested, holding up a gold chain that had the word _RAD_ at the end of it. Annabeth did not look amused.

"You're not in a street gang, Percy. You're not even _rad_. Put it back."

I did, unhappily. The girl behind the counter smiled at the interaction, and it occurred to me that Annabeth and I probably looked very… _couply. _We were jewelry shopping together, after all, not to mention wearing matching shirts and teasing each other. Maybe the lady working here even thought we were looking for _engagement rings,_ which was a pretty horrifying thought. Right? ..._Right?_

Totally tabling the inner-discussion of marriage for the moment (I was barely old enough to drink alcohol, man), did I _like_ coming off as a couple with Annabeth? I certainly liked her, yeah, probably even… _like_ liked her. Would I want to date her? Would she want to date _me?_ Probably not. She was too smart and pretty and –

"Hey," Annabeth said, snapping me out of my silent reverie. I was glad she couldn't tell I'd been thinking complimentary things about her. "Did you ever find your underwater watch?"

"Um, yeah, I left it in my pocket when I did the laundry. Apparently waterproof doesn't equal washing machine-proof, the screen's all cracked."

"Great!" Annabeth said. At the _you're-a-jerk _look I gave her, she rolled her eyes and added, "Not great that you broke it, great that I can buy you a new one!"

"Oh." A punny t-shirt cost a lot less than an underwater watch. "That's not –"

"Shut up, Percy. What color do you want? Blue, right? Isn't that your favorite?"

"Um, yeah." How did she know my favorite color was blue, anyway? I hadn't ever told her that, had I? Actually, thinking back on it, I'd mentioned it in passing in between why Webkinz were better than Club Penguin and how K'Nex were actually way more painful to step on than Legos. That was only a couple weeks into our little routine, and she'd been… listening? What else had I said? I hoped it wasn't anything too embarrassing.

Annabeth bought me the watch, against my quiet protests, and then we went down to the first floor for lunch. The food court was way more packed than the rest of the mall had been, so we chatted about ourselves while we waited in line together. I mentioned that my mom and I had this thing about blue food, which Annabeth got a real kick out of. First she teased me about being a big sweet mama's boy, _then_ she made a big show of ordering a blue Icee for me at the register. I've said it before and I'll say it again: _jerk._

I ordered her an olive pizza in retaliation, because olives sucked and I was sure that she would hate them, so of course they turned out to be her favorite pizza topping of all time. Siiiigh. Annabeth did a much better job of tormenting me by asking for sardines on my slice, knowing _full well_ that I loved fish and seeing them all dead there on my pizza would bum me out. She laughed as I slumped down in my seat and grudgingly took a sip of my amazingly tasty blue Icee.

"So, Percy," she said, reaching for my pizza after it became clear that I wasn't going to touch it. "Tell me about yourself."

I snorted. "I don't think so, Bandanabeth, you know _tons_ about me. I don't even know your last name." I willed out the annoying little voice in my head that was saying _she could be Annabeth Jacksooooon. _That's right, the voice in my head dragged out 'o' in my last name like it was an unfriendly cartoon ghost or something equally lame.

"Chase," she supplied, which I liked well enough. Annabeth Chase. It was better than Annabeth Bank of America, in any case. Ha, get it, because... Chase was a bank... and Bank of America was a bank... obviously... and... all right, I'll stop.

"Well, Chase, where're you from?"

"San Francisco. My family still lives there, I came here for NYU."

"What, UCLA wasn't good enough for you?"

"It was okay," she said, totally seriously, and I rolled my eyes. I was going to city college and she was calling UCLA _okay._ "But I kind of wanted to get away, and NYU's been my dream school since forever, and... well. I don't regret it." She gave a kind of weird sideways look that I couldn't decipher, so I shrugged and moved on.

"Did you get a scholarship, or...?"

"I probably could've, but I didn't apply. My mom's super rich, so... she pays for my tuition and rent on my apartment. And she gives me two grand a month for other stuff."

"Whoa." Okay, I loved Annabeth - objectively! if that made sense - but _man_ did I hate her right then. "That's awesome."

"Uh, yeah. You?"

"Oh, I'm broke," I said conversationally. No point in sugarcoating it, really. "I've been in college for two years but I've only got a couple credits because I have to take classes around my jobs. And I usually get C's."

"Oh," Annabeth said, and suddenly there was this giant awkward silence that never happens in movies because it'd take up half the film and totally ruin it. I puffed out my cheeks and drummed my hands against my knees, and Annabeth averted her gaze to the ceiling. Did she think I was stupid now?

"So," I tried, "have you... seen any good movies lately?"

"Oh, yeah!" she said, looking as relieved as I was for the change in topic. "I saw this one called _Dolphin Tale_ that I thought you'd like, because... you know..."

"I'm a seaweed brain," I finished for her, and she grinned. "Yeah, I saw that. It was good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah... _dolphinately._" I ducked to avoid the straw wrapper she threw at me.

"That was _horrible,_ Perseus... something Jackson. I'm honestly ashamed of you."

"Hey, if _you _can come up with a better fish pun, let minnow."

"_Percy..._"

"C'mon, don't be koi."

And just like that, she'd sprung up from her seat and was _going_ for me. I bolted, out of the food court and past the jewelery story and out of the mall, with Annabeth at my heels. I ran to the safety of my cab, but there wasn't time to unlock it. Annabeth had me cornered.

"Nowhere to run, Jackson."

"You're just jealous because my puns are great." Why was it that I was out of breath and she wasn't?

"Your puns are_ despicable, _Percy, I could come up with better ones in my sleep."

"All right, Chase, you're on. Go for it. Tell me a pun." Annabeth's eyebrows scrunched together, and I grinned.

"Um," she said, clearly at a loss. "Um..."

"How about a fish pun?"

"Um," she said again. "I, uh..."

"You got one yet? Or do you need more time to... mullet over?"

"Dammit, Percy! Um... I'll figure something out. Uh... you'll... you'll _sea._"

I snorted. "You call _that_ a pun?"

"You took all the good ones!"

"Did not!"

"Did too! You should... you should really _scale_ back on them!" At my furrowed eyebrows, she added, "You know... like a fish scale..."

I scoffed. "Come on, Annabeth you're krilling me!" _That's_ how you tell a fish pun. Annabeth groaned and leaned against the side of the cab with me.

"Okay, fine, Percy, you got me. You're better at coming up with horrible, cringe-worthy fish puns than I am. Happy?"

"Very," I told her, and loved the way she blushed at my grin. We were so close, and if she'd just... maybe come a little towards me... we could... and I... and she...

"Oh," she said suddenly, looking down at the bag I hadn't even realized was in her hands. "Oh, uh, you left this." She gave it to me, and I took the underwater watch out from inside of it.

"Thanks," I told her, as I attempted to wrench it out from the impossible plastic bindings in which it was encased. No luck. "I love it. I'll wear it all the time... if I can get it out of this stupid... evil... goddamn... hellish..."

Annabeth rolled her eyes and me and snatched the watch away from me, then returned it a couple seconds later plastic-free. That girl was either a secret body-builder or a _witch._ "Thanks," I said again, blushing. "I... I love it." Crap, hadn't I already said that, too?

Annabeth was smiling at me, and it wasn't in the way that she usually did, when I'd done something stupid and she was mocking me or when I'd told a joke that she'd reluctantly found amusing. She was just... smiling at me. Just smiling. At me. I really liked that.

"This was fun," she told me, still _smiling._ "I had a great time."

"Yeah," I said. "You... you wanna ride in the front seat?"

"The _front seat?_" she gasped, mock-scandalized. "Surely that's illegal or _something?_"

"Only if you're the one driving," I said seriously. "But to be fair, anything'd be safer than me behind the wheel."

"No kidding," she laughed, making her way around to the passenger's side of the cab. "Why on earth did you choose a job where you have to drive around all day? You suck at it."

"Eh, it wasn't really much of a choice. And I like it. I mean, I had this really huge jerk of a first customer and almost gave up on it, but I stuck with it and it's cool."

"A jerk, huh? Are you sure it wasn't just eight o'clock on a Monday morning and maybe she had a headache and a test that day and you were blabbing on about stupid stuff and she didn't want to hear it?"

"Nope, she was a jerk." Annabeth punched me as I opened my door and sat down in the driver's seat, and I groaned. How had I not realized that granting her access to causing me physical harm while on the road would be a horrible idea?

We talked about _How To Train Your Dragon 2 _a bit on the ride home (I was really scarred by it, okay? and Hiccup's uber-hotness was making me question myself as a straight person and a sane human being because he was _animated_), and I swore I saw a look of disappointment on Annabeth's face when we pulled up to her apartment. For a moment I hoped she'd invite me up so that we could hang out longer and I could maybe get her to start watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with me, but I squashed that thought down as quickly as I could. It wasn't gonna happen.

"Oh you don't have to-" I started, as dug around for my eleven dollars and fifty four cents, but she rolled her eyes at me and slapped the money on the dashboard.

"Of course I do. I -" she faltered. "I'll see you later, Percy."

And then she disappeared into a cloak of the night, the darkness enveloping her like a shroud of lost souls around her shoulders and - oh, that was good, I should save that for my _Rise of the Guardians_ fanfiction...

... ... ...

Halfway through Christmas break, I was grumpy and having _serious _Annabeth withdrawals, so when my phone rang at three AM I was perhaps not in the most receptive mood. Knocking over my glass of water as I searched for my phone did not help things.

"Jason, you son of a bitch, I swear to god if you're drunk and I have to pick you up _again_ I am kicking you out of this apartment, I mean it this time I am _kicking you out _I don't care if it's your name on the lease you are going to live in a cardboard box for the rest of your life and you won't be able to bring girls there unless it's like a giant jacuzzi box in which case that's totally big enough but still they'll probably be put off by the fact that you-"

"Wow," a voice that was decidedly not Jason's cut me off. "You greet all your customers like that?"

"Only when they call me at three in the morning," I said. "Annabeth?"

"Uh-huh."

I found myself grinning despite the time. "You kept the business card, didn't you?"

"Of course I didn't!"

"Oh, so you looked at it so much that you memorized the number?"

"I - no, I-"

"So you programmed the number into your phone so you'd always have it with you."

"Shut up, Percy," she grumbled, and I laughed. "I need you to come pick me up."

"Whoa, are _you_ drunk and going to end up living out your days in a jacuzzi box?"

"No, my friends are drunk. I don't have a ride home."

"Aren't there other cabs around?"

"Yeah, well," she said, and I could _hear_ her blushing, "I don't... trust other cab drivers. When it's night. That's when they're murderers."

"And you think I'm an exception? Dude, you just interrupted me in the middle of disposing of my roommate's body."

She laughed. "I'll tell the authorities to look for a jacuzzi box."

I sat up in bed and turned on the lamp by my bed, unable to stop myself from smiling. "Admit you missed me and I'll come pick you up."

"I missed you," she said easily, which I was _not_ expecting.

"That... was surprisingly easy."

"I really need a ride, I'm willing to lie to get it."

"Oh, haha. And what if I really am a murderer?"

"You couldn't undo the plastic wrapping on a watch, Percy, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine."

"All right, shut up, I'm coming. Where are you?" I pulled on my shirt and socks as she relayed the address to me, and as I shuffled down the stairs I found that I wasn't even ashamed of how happy I was to get to see her.

... ... ...

"So, delinquent," I greeted her. "How was your night out on the town?"

"I'm twenty one, Percy, hanging out at a bar doesn't make me a delinquent. And... fine."

"You hit on anyone?"

She snorted. "No."

"Get hit on by anyone?"

"Nope."

"Any fist fights?"

"Uh-uh."

"Strippers?"

"Negative."

"Honestly, Annabeth, I don't get why you ever leave your _apartment._" I decided not to mention that I never did any of those things, either. "What _did_ you do?"

"Nothing, really, my friend Thalia dragged me along. I don't... prefer to be out this late."

"Yeah, me neither. Sleep, you know? Oh, how was your Christmas?"

"Okay. My family's in Cali, so I was alone, but... how was yours?"

"Awesome," I told her truthfully. "My mom and step-dad live in the building next to mine, I went over and we all made cookies. And I got_ Danny Phantom_ on DVD! You should totally come over, we'll marathon."

"Sure," she said, then glanced at the digital clock on the radio. "Wow, 3:26. Got any puns at this time of day?"

"You bet. What kind?"

"Oh, I don't know." She scrunched her eyebrows up in that way I loved. "How about a car pun? I think that was the first kind you told me."

"Yeah," I said, smiling at the memory. "Um... okay, I couldn't figure out how to pull out of my parking space, so I used my backup plan."

"It's sad that you just _had_ that," Annabeth said, grinning faintly. "You're a seaweed brain."

"So I've heard." I stopped at a red light and glanced at her briefly. Her face was lit up by the traffic light and her eyes were closed, and I _really liked _her. More than I liked marine biology. It was a scary thought. "Um... um, so, you're good at math, right?"

"Better than you."

"Well, how much money do you think you've stiffed me in tips over the last four months?" Annabeth smiled some more, then _scrunched up her eyebrows god frickin' dammit whyyyyy._

"Hmm... operating under the assumption that the standard cab-tipping percentage is about 0.15, and my cab fare is eleven dollars and fifty four cents, I ought to pay you maybe another dollar and seventy cents in tippage."

"'Tippage?'"

"It sounds like a Percy word, shut up. Since my cab fair is eleven fifty, I'd probably round it all up to thirteen bucks, maybe fourteen if I was feeling generous. So on average I'd probably tip you about two bucks. We've known each other four months, that's about seventeen weeks, so a hundred and nineteen days minus weekends... that's 85 days, give or take a few."

Whoa. Okay, first off, my crush was the cutest math nerd _ever_, and secondly, 85 days? I couldn't decide if that number felt too big or too small. Annabeth was still talking.

"For the first... oh, let's say 45 of those days you gave me a ride once a day, and then for the next 40 it was twice a day, so that's... about $250. I've stiffed you $250 in tippage since we met."

"Minus thirty bucks for the watch."

"That was a present, it doesn't count. We're at an even $250."

"It's a good number," I mused. "You should tip me from now on so it doesn't get messed up."

"Nice try, Percy."

"Seriously," I insisted, as we pulled up in front of her apartment. "I deserve a tip."

"Good night, Seaweed Brain," she said stepping out of the cab. "Oh, hey, look, a star's out tonight."

I shot her a skeptical look. "You sure it's not a helicopter?"

"Come see for yourself, idiot." I got out of the car and stood next to her. It really was a star. "That's awesome. There're barely ever stars above NYC."

"I know," she said, kind of wistfully. "I love it here, but... I miss the stars. I'd show you constellations if we could see them."

"Don't worry, I'd probably be bored anyway."

"What, you don't like stars?"

"I kind of have this thing against astronomy."

"What?" Annabeth looked shocked. "Why?"

"Well, you know. They totally could've called it _sky-ence_ and they didn't. A real opportunity missed there."

Annabeth laughed and leaned into me, and my heartbeat totally _tripled._ "Seawee-"

"Yeah, I know." We stood there in comfortable silence for a moment, until I ruined it by yawning obnoxiously.

"Tired?"

"It's," I checked my watch, "3:38, give me a break."

Annabeth shifted so that she was looking up at me. "It is pretty late."

"Oh, I hadn't noticed."

"Maybe you _do_ deserve a tip," she murmured, and I looked down at her and suddenly she was _way_ close and I opened my mouth to say something awkward or punny or both but I couldn't because she was kissing me.

Okay, I'd kissed a lot of girls in my time (two is a lot okay IT'S MORE THAN YOU PROBABLY) but I had never ever _ever_ had a kiss like that. It lasted for six years and half a second at the same time, and I don't remember most of it but I can tell you that I kissed her back and she didn't pull away and it was _awesome._

"...That was awfully presumptuous of you," I got out, after we finally pulled away from one another. Annabeth scrunched. Up. Her. _Eyebrows_ so I kissed her again. She didn't complain. We were pretty much making out in the middle of the street and it was three AM and she owned me $250 and I'd never been happier.

"So," she mumbled in between kisses, fisting the fabric of my shirt in one of her hands and bringing the other up to the back of my neck, "what... what was so presumptuous of me? And where... did you learn a word like... like that." She was breathless. I was making her _breathless!_ The score was surely at least Percy: 96 billion Annabeth: 0 by now. Or, you know, reversed, but whatever.

"I'm a city college student, excuse me. And kissing me as a tip? A $250 tip? What if I didn't like you?"

"I'm not usually wrong," Annabeth whispered, and did I mention that she tasted like strawberries? Because she tastes like strawberries. Awesome strawberries. "Am I wrong this time?"

I kissed her again. "Nope."

"So you'll forgive me for stiffing you $250?"

I kissed her _again_. "It was worth every penny."

... ... ...

Two months later, Annabeth climbed into the front seat of the cab with me. We were rule-breakers like that. She leaned over to give me a kiss before pulling out her giant sketchpad and asking, "So what's the agenda for today?"

"I thought we could go see a movie and get some pizza or something."

"Classic," she said. "Extra olives?"

"You bet."

"Hey, what's the difference between a pizza and my jokes?"

"...I dunno, what?"

"My jokes can't be topped!"

I laughed so hard that I nearly rear-ended the car in front of me. "Did you really just tell that joke for me?" She nodded and grinned. "That's so romantic."

"I try."

"No, really, you just won a pizza my heart with that."

She forewent her usual groaning at my bad jokes in favor of smiling harder at me. "Olive you."

_Definitely_ my best customer.

.

_fin._ _lmao __get it? like a fish fin? hahaha but no yeah fin._


End file.
